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Photo of Yuzu fruit cut open from Andy Powning's back yard. It's kind of dried out looking cause it's been hanging on the tree for a long time, even though it was just picked before the photo was taken. It is usually more juicy looking when cut open.
Craig Lee / The Chronicle MANDATORY CREDIT FOR PHOTOG AND SF CHRONICLE/ -MAGS OUT

Photo: Craig Lee

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Photo of Yuzu fruit cut open from Andy...

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Photo: Craig Lee

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Photo: Craig Lee

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YUZU & HUCKLEBERRY / FLAVORS OF THE MOMENT / How these and other obscure ingredients end up on so many Bay Area menus

While epidemiologists have been stalking that nasty avian virus from Asia, two other contagions have taken hold in Bay Area restaurants. Fortunately, they're harmless.

But perusing local menus confirms that numerous establishments are smitten. Most, but not all, are high-end operations, the trendsetters we look to for the next big thing. And as swiftly as fashions sweep through a high school, two items are proliferating on Bay Area menus, leaving frequent diners puzzling over these suddenly ubiquitous ingredients.

So, chefs: What is it with the yuzus and huckleberries?

"We're all junkies for the new," says Douglas Keane, the chef at Cyrus in Healdsburg, where yuzu, a tart Japanese citrus, flavors a chilled consommé served with seared hamachi, and both yuzu and huckleberries figure in a house cocktail called Huck Yu.

Yuzu also brightens ceviche and a Lemon Drop cocktail at San Francisco's Ame. It scents the sea bream sashimi at Frisson and the scallop sashimi at Scott Howard. Huckleberries garnish the foie gras at the Dining Room at the Ritz-Carlton, La Folie, Scott Howard, Frisson and Bix.

The myriad sightings raise questions about the sources of chefs' inspirations. Why these two ingredients, and why now?

"Very few of this generation of chefs is immune to the siren song of new ingredients," says Michael Batterberry, founding editor of Food Arts magazine, a trade publication for the restaurant industry.

"With yuzu, for example, everybody who was interested in Asian brushstrokes on a menu was looking for the next new brilliant flavor."

The fact that yuzu was obscure and initially hard to find made it that much more appealing, adds Batterberry. "Exclusivity of ingredients is very appealing to contemporary chefs."

Yuzu is a hard, bumpy fruit with a lot of seeds and not much juice. Elizabeth Andoh, a noted authority on the food of Japan, calls it a citron. When ripe, it turns golden yellow, almost the color of a Meyer lemon.

Yuzu's aromatic peel

"People use all of it, but the skin is the special stuff," says Andy Powning, a produce specialist with Greenleaf Produce in San Francisco. "It's loaded with these amazing volatile oils."

In Japan, cooks use slivers of the highly aromatic peel in the savory custard chawan mushi, or in miso soup -- "just enough to make a point," says Hiro Sone, the Japanese-born chef of Ame, who is nurturing three yuzu trees at his St. Helena home. It's also common in Japan to finish a clear broth with yuzu zest, says Sone. The broth is served in a lidded bowl that traps the yuzu's perfume until the diner lifts the lid.

Because of U.S. Department of Agriculture concerns about spreading citrus diseases, Japan's fresh yuzu can't be imported. Domestic production is in its infancy -- Hamada Farms in Kingsburg has about 60 fruit-bearing trees, and Powning recently planted 14 at his home in Oakland -- but most of the yuzu on Bay Area menus is bottled juice from Japan. The juice costs as much as fine wine. Chefs pay about $40 for 900 milliliters, according to Mika Higurashi, a saleswoman for IMP, a food distributor in San Mateo, but most dishes require only a few drops.

Some Bay Area chefs credit Nobu Matsuhisa, the prominent Japanese chef, with launching the yuzu phenomenon. With restaurants in Beverly Hills, New York, Las Vegas and beyond, Matsuhisa has visibility.

Kelly Degala, chef at Va de Vi in Walnut Creek, says many of his suburban customers know yuzu because they have encountered it at one of Matushisa's restaurants. Tiradito (Peruvian-style sashimi) with yuzu vinaigrette is a riff on one of the Japanese chef's signature dishes. "Someone of his stature influences chefs," Degala admits.

The popularity of raw bars has also fueled yuzu's ascendancy. The fruit's brisk tartness complements sashimi, ceviche, crudo and other raw seafood presentations. Many chefs add the juice to ponzu, a Japanese dipping sauce.

"It's not as acidic as a lemon or lime," says Scott Howard, of the restaurant of the same name, who suggests using it wherever one would use Meyer lemon juice.

"More like a lime with sweet tones of orange," says Keane.

"Really, really floral -- like a turbo Meyer lemon," says Bruce Hill, chef of Bix in San Francisco and Picco in Larkspur. Hill is a fan of the peel.

Huckleberry enthusiasts also praise the profound scent of this foraged fruit, a wild cousin of the cultivated blueberry.

"It's one of the most aromatic things I know, and I'm a woman who sells truffles," says Connie Green, whose Napa company, Wine Forest Wild Mushrooms, supplies foraged ingredients to chefs. Green puts the huckleberries in the front seat when she's driving so she can enjoy their scent.

Huckleberries take off

Huckleberries, of course, have been with us forever, and many chefs say they have been using them for a long time. But suppliers claim sales have skyrocketed. One distributor, Franco Vassallo of PanExotic, which has its major warehouse near Mount Shasta, says he started with 2,000 pounds of huckleberries five years ago and now sells 12,000 to 15,000 pounds a year to chefs in Northern California.

Efforts to cultivate the berry have not been successful, says Green, so the supply is still entirely wild, gathered in the Pacific Northwest and coastal California from late summer through late fall. When ripe, the thin-skinned berries are so fragile that they must be frozen if not used immediately. But they freeze superbly.

Huckleberry bushes are slow to mature. They thrive in clearings in the forest where sunlight can reach them, but even under those conditions they may take 25 years to bear fruit. Recent bumper crops of huckleberries in Washington state are attributed to the eruption of Mount St. Helens in 1980, which decimated many trees.

Chefs say huckleberries are one of the few crossover berries, useful in both sweet and savory dishes. Roland Passot of La Folie uses them in a sauce for panna cotta, but also with foie gras, duck and venison. The berries are more tangy than sweet and balance the fattiness of rich meats.

"They have this bright snap when you bite into them," says Sarah Schafer, executive chef at Frisson, who has used them in a dish she refers to as foie gras French toast, made with brioche. "I just think blueberries are on the bland side." Huckleberries, she says, "are a little more playful."

As Schafer suggests, the word "huckleberry" may please us in subtle ways beyond taste, connoting an idealized rural America that many of us have never known.

Bartenders like them, too. At Bix, the berries are transformed into a syrup, then combined with gin, lemon and soda to make a head-turning purple gin fizz. Scott Beattie, the inventive bartender at Cyrus, had a similar inspiration when the kitchen parted with some huckleberries. Beattie made huckleberry syrup and mixed it with yuzu juice, verjus, limoncello and vodka to make the Cabernet-colored Huck Yu, served straight up in a martini glass. The drink will return to the menu in the fall, when fresh huckleberries are in season.

Will yuzus and huckleberries stick around and work their way into home kitchens, or will overexposure render them as unfashionable as sun-dried tomatoes? Will home cooks eventually keep a bottle of yuzu juice alongside the soy sauce?

"I don't see huckleberries as a trend," says Passot, who believes the wild berries are distinctive enough for an indefinite run. "Whereas nettles, that's a trend. Twenty years ago, you never heard of them. Now they're popping up on every menu. But if you blanch them, do they have any flavor? Parsley has more flavor."

Yuzu's fate may rest on whether more domestic growers plant it and grow it successfully. Until then, it will remain rare and, even in bottled form, expensive. Yet many produce items that were once unfamiliar are now well established in Bay Area markets because chefs demanded them and farmers responded, says Powning.

"Twenty-five years ago, chefs were coming to Greenleaf and saying, 'How come we don't have mesclun mix?'" he recalls. "Five years ago, we didn't know broccoli di cicco from a can of paint. Now it's significant."

An Italian variety that forms many side shoots instead of a single head, broccoli di cicco is indeed a rising star. Italian butter beans are also an emerging phenomenon, says Powning, and flageolet beans may not be far behind, if chefs press for them.

The produce specialist sounds confident that yuzu is here for the long haul.

"But I'm an optimist," he says, "and I have 14 trees."

Sources

Here are a few stores that carry yuzus and huckleberries. Fresh huckleberries may be available in some farmers' markets later this summer.